Children's food patterns--a review: I. Food preferences and feeding problems.

Many studies of children's food preferences and feeding problems are limited by cultural definition of food preferences, feeding problems, and parental management (32, 40, 51, 59, 90). In general, most samples have been white middle class families with children in nursery school; nutritional adequacy has not been considered; food preferences and feeding problems have not been well defined; and poorly documented observations have been generalized to other or all populations. The results at this level of abstraction do not offer solutions to children's food behavior or begin to unravel the mystery of the role of preferences and problems in predicting food behavior and nutritional status. Although results of studies may vary because of methodology, the greatest problem is the level of abstraction. Some research is beginning to identify more rigorously attributes, dimensions, or factors involved in the formation of children's food patterns, using a broader theoretical framework (29, 33, 34, 47, 63, 64, 66, 68-70). Part II of this article examines food preferences by using a family point of view.